I was drawn by forces beyond my understanding to a local pawn shop where I saw a beautiful, aged ride cymbal poking out of a stack of B8s leaning against a counter. As I picked it up and examined the stamp, I knew this was no cheap beginner cymbal. The price: $60. I reached into my wallet, handed cash from my recent New Year's Eve gig to the clerk who couldn't understand why I was grinning so widely.

My loot was an A Zildjian & CIE Constantinople brilliant 20" ride - from the 70's - 80's period when they hadn't yet come up with the Brilliant designation. A really nice rock ride, selling between $169 and $299 on eBay. Not a bad bargain, and a really nice cymbal. It debuts at my gig on Friday night!

$8 additional per cymbal and available on Avedis Zildjian and Zilco cymbals. A Zildjian & Cie came after the introduction of Brilliants.

That version of the A Zildjian & Cie stamp is the 1973 one. I haven't yet pinned down when that version was replaced by the later A Zildjian & Cie trademark. The later version has stylistic similarities to the K trademark introduced in 1982 or so, and the A Zildjian & CO. stamp which is also 80s. See: http://black.net.nz/avedis/avedis-ga...l#AZCieConstan

I don't know where eBay is getting the range of $169 and $299 from. Is that specific to A Zildjian & Cie cymbals? Is that specific to the 1970s? My research shows an expected median value of $120 which is well below their entire range. I don't report them separately (only 5 completed sales for 20" rides so far) but the bigger context on prices is

The A Zildjian & Cie cymbals tend to be heavier (a nice rock ride as you say) and fetch prices with the same distribution as other 70s cymbals. So the median expected price is $144 with half selling for between $88 and $165 n=46.

If the eBay price range is mixing in A Zildjian & Cie Vintage (very different cymbals and very different price behavior as you can see over on the far right) I can see them getting the range they report. One quarter of cymbals offered for sale have either no identification of production era, or an incorrect identification. So if the eBay algorithm doesn't identify the cymbals properly and just uses the seller description you can expect inaccurate results. See: http://black.net.nz/avedis/avedis-pr...nfusion-matrix

So $60 is great buying, but possibly not as great as that eBay price range suggests. I am really interested in following up precisely where and how that eBay price range is presented.

It was based on my quick perusal of eBay and Reverb listings last night, and represents the high and low listings I found. It doesn't include cymbals from the later "Vintage Rarities" line, which tend to mush in with search results for these cymbals. I agree that the $299 listing is probably a highball.

I bought a 20" CIE about 6 years ago for $90 on eBay. It was quite heavy and I didn't care for it, so I had it lathed and re-hammered by Heather Stine (she charged $100 at the time). She improved it a LOT, although I still wasn't sufficiently fond of it, so I sold it. As a "Stine", it sold for $175 on eBay.